The Philadelphia Inquirer has described Allen as being "[a]mong the better-known practitioners of speculative poetry"[4] and said his poems "work best when his bizarre lyricism is put in the service of a scary and taut narrative."[4]

Allen also used Kickstarter to continue publishing Clockwork Phoenix, a fantasy fiction anthology series he began editing in 2008.[8][9][10]

Strange Horizons called the first crowdfunded volume, Clockwork Phoenix 4, a look into "the future of publishing, in which a crowd-sourced publication from a very small press can produce, and can present professionally and beautifully, work which is at the height of what is being written in genre."[11]